cape the fulfilment of her promise.

The music of 'Il Trovatore' shows a sad falling off from the promise of
'Rigoletto.' Face to face with such a libretto, Verdi probably felt that
refinement and characterisation were equally out of the question, and
fell back on the coarseness of his earlier style. 'Il Trovatore' abounds
with magnificent tunes, but they are slung together with very little
feeling for appropriateness. There is a brutal energy about the work
which has been its salvation, for of the higher qualities, which make a
fitful appearance in 'Rigoletto,' there is hardly a trace.

'La Traviata' (1853) is an operatic version of Dumas's famous play, 'La
Dame aux Camellias.' The sickly tale of the love and death of Marguerite
Gauthier, here known as Violetta, is hardly an ideal subject for a
libretto, and it says much for Verdi's versatility that, after his
excursions into transpontine melodrama, he was able to treat
'drawing-room tragedy' with success. Alfredo Germont loves Violetta, the
courtesan, and establishes himself with her in a villa outside Paris.
There his old father pays Violetta a visit, and, by representing that
the matrimonial prospects of his daughter are injured by Violetta's
connection with Alfredo, induces her to leave him. Alfredo is indignant
at Violetta's supposed inconstancy, and insults her publicly at a ball
in Paris. In the last act Violetta dies of consumption after an
affecting reconciliation with her lover. The music of 'La Traviata' is
in strong contrast to Verdi's previous work. The interest of Dumas's
play is mainly psychological, and demands a delicacy of treatment which
would have been thrown away upon the melodramatic subjects which Verdi
had hitherto affected. Much of his music is really graceful and
refined, but his efforts to avoid vulgarity occasionally land him in
the slough of sentimentality. Nevertheless, the pathos which
characterises some of the scenes has kept 'La Traviata' alive, though
the opera is chiefly employed now as a means of allowing a popular prima
donna to display her high notes and her diamonds.

'Les Vepres Siciliennes,' which was produced in Paris in 1855, during
the Universal Exhibition, only achieved a partial success, and 'Simon
Boccanegra' (1857), even in the revised and partly re-written form which
was performed in 1881, has never been popular out of Italy. 'Un Ballo in
Maschera' (1861), on the other hand, was for many years a great
favourite in this